Libby Liu

Libby Liu is an internationally renowned expert on human rights, press freedom, information operations and internet freedom who joined Whistleblower Aid as chief executive officer in April 2021. Ms. Liu directs Whistleblower Aid’s work supporting public servants and courageous private employees who seek to expose government and corporate wrongdoing without breaking the law.

Ms. Liu has dedicated her career to advancing international human rights, fighting on behalf of individuals who have been denied their right to express themselves, to share ideas and to inform the public discourse. Her extensive experience supporting pro-democracy activists and independent journalists in some of the world’s most repressive environments lends her unique insights into the challenges facing today’s whistleblowers, particularly related to technology, misinformation campaigns and the abuse of power used to silence truth-tellers.

Prior to joining Whistleblower Aid, Ms. Liu created the Open Technology Fund (OTF), now an independent nonprofit that nurtures the technologies underpinning a free and uncensored internet. During her time as OTF’s chief executive officer, Ms. Liu spearheaded efforts to support tools that circumvent censorship and surveillance and advance free speech in censored and underserved communities worldwide. Today, more than 2 billion people use OTF-supported technologies every day, including Signal, TOR and Wireguard.

Ms. Liu was compelled to create OTF to protect the digital lives of individuals while serving as president of Radio Free Asia (RFA), a non-profit media company that provides uncensored objective news and information otherwise unavailable to audiences in East Asia. In 16 years at the helm, she led RFA’s vision, directed RFA’s editorial strategy and shaped its administrative policies, working closely with a bipartisan board, its grantor agency, USAGM, oversight and appropriations committees of the U.S. Congress, the State Department, international public broadcasters and stakeholders in the U.S. and abroad.

Ms. Liu has also held key strategic and operational positions with national civil-rights organizations and in Silicon Valley’s tech industry. She has served as assistant district attorney in the San Francisco District Attorney’s office and is a former corporate labor and employment law attorney. In 2021, she was honored as a Luxembourg Peace Prize laureate for outstanding work on technology that promotes peace.

She holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of California-Berkeley, an MBA from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.